Bad News for the NFL: John Riggins’ Wife Is a Lawyer

The more Lisa-Marie Riggins spoke, the more flabbergasted Frank Fahrenkopf became. It was November 2016, and the two were having lunch at the City Club on 13th Street with Lisa-Marie’s husband, John, the Washington Redskins’ star running back in the 1970s and ’80s.

Fahrenkopf had chaired the Republican National Committee in the 1980s. Like many prominent Washingtonians of the Reagan era, he often was a guest in former Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke’s luxury box at RFK Stadium—back when the team was winning Super Bowls and when a breakaway run by “Riggo” would cause the stadium’s bleacher seats to bounce up and down. “When that place started to rock,” Fahrenkopf says, “it would literally move!”